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How to Choose the Best VPS

VPS, or Virtual Private Servers, are not for the faint of heart, unless you know a little about choosing the best VPS to meet your hosting needs. Although it’s a favorite web hosting platform among many small business owners, especially those venturing into e-commerce, VPS requires users to truly understand the ins and outs of the hosting environment before settling on it as a final choice.

Taking an Initial Hosting Assessment

The first step in choosing the best VPS is taking an initial assessment of your website hosting needs. Even though tutorials are available with the intended purpose of guiding users through tough processes, such as initial configuration, if you lack the knowledge or experience, then you may want to opt for managed hosting.
Most VPS hosting services offer the option of setting up and managing websites available as upgraded packages. While managed hosting is more expensive compared to basic web hosting (often $100/month or more) the extra cost is a worthwhile investment in the long run if you anticipate technical difficulties.
Other important determining factors when selecting the best VPS is hosting features and services include: available memory, bandwidth, disk space, customer support and contingency plans.

Memory

When making an initial assessment of your hosting needs, knowing how much memory your website requires is vital when choosing the optimal VPS host. VPS servers are basically priced on a scale according to the amount of memory required, so if you anticipate heavy website traffic or use Apache, then you should expect to use more memory; thus prepare to pay more.

You can calculate your website’s memory usage by contacting your current host to get an idea. If you don’t have a website yet, consider purchasing a plan with adequate available memory with the option to always upgrade.

Bandwidth and Space

Almost as equally important as memory requirements is the available bandwidth and disk space. Many web hosts market themselves as being extremely affordable, however, bundled in the attractive hosting plans is scarcely enough bandwidth and space to get your website off the ground. Having a general idea of how much of each your website requires is important when assessing your hosting needs. Again, by simply contacting your current web host can provide you with this information.

Customer Support

It’s a fact that user guides and tutorials can’t resolve all of your technical issues; therefore, having dependable and attentive live customer support is crucial for maintaining a successful website. Don’t be afraid to test-drive customer support options before making a final decision.

Reputable customer service representatives should provide quick and informative responses in attempt to resolve troubleshooting issues. When choosing the best VPS host, opt for one that provides full support without charging extra fees for partial support or requires you to purchase a managed level service plan to obtain customer support. Remember customer support should never be an add-on service!

Contingency Plans

Whether inquiring about regular data backups or the fine legal agreements, reading contingency policies and procedures is fundamental when choosing the best VPS host. While VPS hosting offers many benefits including enhanced security, VPS host reliability is often questionable as vendors vanish without warning. This possesses a huge problem for users depending on the hosting service for online business ventures. With this is mind, inquire about the host’s contingency plan if it goes bankrupt or the company goes offline for other unavoidable dire reasons.

Conclusion

While there are many elements to take into consideration when choosing the best VPS to manage your hosting needs, having a basic understanding of the hosting environment and the important non-negotiable factors to keep in mind are ideal benchmarks for assessing your needs. Although VPS hosting is best-suited for small to mid-size business ventures, the platform may not be conducive for larger business endeavors.